Celebration

When Alice isn’t working, she doesn’t really have anywhere else to go. Often, she ends up sitting on the bench outside the store where she’s employed, waiting for her next shift to start.

Gradually, she seems to have gotten a routine and begun to cope with her existence. Neither she nor I noticed the change happen, but she’s now coming in to work most days feeling mostly alright.

So it’s a surprise for me when she’s given a promotion one day. But not as much of a surprise as it is for her. Her traits mean she would never have thought herself capable or deserving of this. I have seen other Sims get a promotion. They’re pleased, but otherwise go about their day as normal. Alice is ecstatic, and she shouts in celebration as she leaves work.

For some time, she thinks about little else. Whatever she’s doing, she will periodically stop to punch the air or cheer.

After so many hours of watching Alice display only misery or numbness, seeing her loudly and outwardly express genuine happiness is startling.

That is really, really heartwarming. The fact that a game like the sims managed to make me feel honest to God happiness for a digital character is astonishing enough, but managing to convey it with mere words and pictures, over the internet no less, is nothing short of astounding.

What Jackrabbit said. Never thought I’d feel so good about something so fictional.

Thanks for continuing this, Roburky. I’ll be punching the air throughout the morning just thinking of Alice’s good fortune.

(One aside: During the 1850s, thousands of people waited dockside for delivery of Dickens’ latest installment of “Little Dorritt” because they just couldn’t wait to hear about their favorite fictional characters. We really haven’t changed that much; it’s just easier to get the latest installment.)

Excitable Sims usually yell the loudest. ROFL Yeah, maybe she will stay happy for the rest of her life and earn enough money to retire! Then buy a house! (Kinda late, but not TOO late) =D SHE SHALL LIVE ON FOREVAAAAAAA If you get her or Kev the death flower or life fruit or ambrosia, then they live longer! Vegitarians do too. =D

No, Ambrosia and Life Fruit are expensive and time wasting. The death flower, however, isn’t available in stores. Go to the graveyard, and there should be one in there. Harvest it, and use it wisely. Save Kev now, or grow it and keep it for Alice? GASP YOU FORGOT TO TELL US IF ZED MARRIED SHIRLEY OR NOT!!!!

I don’t care for the Sims 3 as a game. My daughters have been playing it and I find a lot of it quite disturbing at times. Robin’s experiences with it interest me, though, because he’s not doing a lot of manipulation, at least it doesn’t seem so. It would be interesting to hear from the developers who worked on the game to see how much of this they programmed in and how much is just happening.

What exactly disturbs you about the game? I personally love the game. I love seeing how the different traits decide how my Sims interact with the people around them and how it affects their lives. I like sending them somewhere and seeing how they act when I’m not telling them what to do and it’s enjoyable to see how much like real life (and yet still fake enough to not be creepy)it is. I think you get more attached to your Sims in this game than you did in The Sims or The Sims 2 because they seem so much more like actual people and you actually care about what happens to them. I love seeing conversations in person and on the phone because what they talk about actually correlates to what they’ve been doing before the conversation. I think it’s fun to see the thought/talk bubbles and make up what I think they’re saying.

Maybe you could try playing it once just to see if you like it better after you see what it’s all about?

I wouldn’t be surprised that he was slightly disturbed by Sims. I remember when I discovered killing them off, I almost couldn’t stop. You should have seen me when I discovered boolprop and pulled out the Tombstone of Life & Death in Sims 2. I was adding everyone in the neighborhood to my family to kill them by flies, electrocution, satellite, drowning, and fire. And even crazier, in Sims 3, you can look in another sim’s house. Stalkerish and creepy. Plus in Sims 2, guys could get pregnant via alien abduction, so…

Due to the lack of specifics regarding your dislike and disturbance for the game, we don’t have a lot to go on. I will simply state that this is an adult game for the most part and at the very least, would require multiple discussions that real life is only shallowly approximated by the game. Real life is much more complex and difficult.

Shallow approximation aside, I’ll never forget my burst of laughter when coworkers in cubicle land resembled the Sims telling a joke by tone of voice and hand gestures. “She-wa-wa, Rapidol” (or a bad translation of Simlish)

WOOO! go alice!!,i was also wondering what you’re gunna do once kev dies. are you going to continue the story with alice? are you gunna turn it into a legacy of sorts? or just stop and make a new story?

This isn’t really a complaint. I think this blog is very cool, and I’m happy to read it whenever it’s updated.

Having said that I still don’t get its collapse and now random updates. Each update is like 5 sentences at most, with maybe 4 screenshots pasted in covering at MOST a few minutes of in-game time. I fail to see how this results in lack of time to update it. Again–not complaining so much as wondering how it all adds up. I’m not going to complain about something that someone is volunteering their own time for. I am just curious.

I just peeked at your blog and have subscribed to it via RSS. It looks great and I’ll go through the older posts at length when I have time. I’m also going to blogroll it on my budding Sims stories blog.

Yayyy, Alice and Kev is back in full force. 🙂 Great to see Alice happy for once. I’ve never really seen Sims react so positively to a promotion, even my excitable sims. I can’t remember… is Alice excitable? Either way, that’s a big reaction. I guess when you’re life is that hard when you finally catch a break you just can’t keep it to yourself.

Yay! The post is back up! I’m glad Alice got her promotion. Hopefully that way, she can still afford to send at least 100 simoleons (the minimum amount you can donate) to charity and still be able to afford a decent place to live sometime soon.

As much as I love updates, like some I’ve noticed a difference. As a suggestion perhaps you could have a proof reader? Would take off some stress.
A second suggestion would to do a profile post on the main charicters; so far being Alice and Kev and maybe Zed. Would be great filler when you don’t have something else to post. Just listing all their traits, your opinions, and such.
Wishing you the best.

Other people have been a little rude about this, but I agree a little witha few of them. Since your hiatus, this blog just hasn’t been as good. I don’t know if it’s because Alice is grown up and Kev is getting ready to die, but it doesn’t seem as interesting.

Not that I don’t love it. I do. And when I saw that Alice got promoted, I was like, “Yay Alice! You go girl!” And apparently some people dislike Kev, but just think about it from his point of view.

Maybe he fell in love, got married, and then his wife died in child birth. Maybe he blames Alice for her death. And he’s homeless. He’s a single parent living in an old abandoned park. Just think how hard that must be for him.